Article

5min read

Luxury’s Secret Weapon | Anaïs Levy

Anaïs Levy shares how luxury brands use experimentation to balance brand image with business performance, plus why removing prices can actually boost conversions.

Anaïs Levy knows the secret behind what drives luxury digital experiences. As the E-commerce & Omnichannel Services Insights Manager at the Kering Group, the powerhouse group behind iconic luxury brands such as Gucci, Balenciaga, and Saint Laurent to name a few, she leverages over ten years in conversion rate optimization to help some of the largest luxury brands build dazzling digital experiences. 

Before joining Kering, Anaïs worked across various industries, from travel giant Expedia to luxury group LVMH. Her unique position involves analyzing business performance across multiple luxury brands, helping them make data-driven decisions while respecting their distinct artistic visions. As a long-term AB Tasty customer and frequent speaker at industry events, Anaïs brings a rare perspective on how luxury brands navigate the delicate balance between brand image and business optimization.

Anaïs Levy spoke with AB Tasty’s Head of Marketing and host of “The 1000 Experiments Club” podcast, John Hughes, about navigating creative constraints in luxury experimentation, leveraging cross-brand benchmarking to drive results, and how omnichannel thinking is revolutionizing conversion rate optimization in the luxury space.

Here are some of the takeaways from their conversation.

Beyond the website: Luxury’s omnichannel reality

The numbers tell a story that completely reframes how we should think about luxury e-commerce: “Among all our visitors, if we sum up visitors in the stores and visitors on our websites, the majority, like 90% is coming to the website and 10% is our traffic in store,” Anaïs shares.

But here’s the twist—most purchases still happen offline. This flips traditional CRO thinking on its head.

“When you have this overview of understanding the business, understanding how luxury websites fit into the whole customer journey, conversion rate optimization is about understanding how you make the most of each asset you have,” she explains.

For luxury brands, websites serve multiple purposes beyond direct sales. Customers use them for research and discovery, to prepare for store visits, for aspirational browsing, and to access omnichannel services like click-and-collect or appointment booking.

“We know we have aspirational customers, but we were not treating them as a specific segment. So everybody coming to the website should in the end convert. And I guess now with the rise of omnichannel and services… we have come to this conclusion that a significant amount of traffic is not going to purchase online,” Anaïs notes.

The takeaway? Stop measuring luxury e-commerce success purely on online conversion rates. Instead, it’s about thinking bigger. How does your digital experience drive overall brand engagement and omnichannel revenue?

The art of compromise with creative constraints

Working with luxury brands means constant negotiation between artistic vision and business performance. “It’s a lot of compromise,” Anaïs admits. “The brand image, the design is really the voice of the artistic director.”

But here’s where persistence pays off. When faced with a creative “no,” Anaïs doesn’t give up—she waits, gathers more data, and asks again. “You have to be stubborn because it could be a no. But two months, three months, six months after you ask again and one day you would have a yes,” she explains.

Her secret weapon? Benchmark data across sister brands. When one Kering brand achieves better checkout completion rates than another, it becomes harder to argue against proven improvements.

“If your sister brands can achieve these figures and they have kind of the same backbone, the same services, same offer, it means that there is something that we are not doing right,” she points out.

This creates a unique advantage where luxury brands can iterate on proven concepts while maintaining their distinct identities. Anaïs’s team has built AB test catalogs shared across all brands and runs group-wide experimentation events to facilitate this knowledge sharing.

Think global, analyze local with segmentation

Anaïs’s team runs experiments globally but analyzes results with surgical precision. “The tip I would give to people who would listen to this podcast is really think global, because then if you make it work for most of your users, your gains are way higher,” she advises.

But the magic happens in the analysis. “When you analyze, don’t forget to try looking at some important segments. So countries could be some… We are using a lot EmotionsAI segmentation to analyze the results because it gives you ideas about why the ‘Competition’ segment didn’t like these experiments,” she explains.

This granular approach reveals opportunities for personalization. By breaking down results by country, device, and behavioral and emotional segments, teams uncover insights that would be invisible in aggregate data.

The strategy works because it balances efficiency with insight: global rollouts maximize impact and streamline development, while segmented analysis reveals why certain groups respond differently, creating opportunities for follow-up experiments that target specific segments with tailored experiences.

What else can you learn from our conversation with Anaïs Levy?

  • The surprising price experiment: How removing prices from product listing pages actually increased conversions by focusing attention on products rather than cost
  • AI’s luxury future: From productivity tools to conversational search that mimics in-store personal shopping experiences
  • The newsletter discovery: How a failed lazy-loading test accidentally revealed hidden engagement opportunities in page footers
  • Cross-brand collaboration: The internal tools and processes that help luxury brands share learnings while maintaining their unique identities

About Anaïs Levy

Anaïs Levy has over ten years of experience in conversion rate optimization, spanning industries from travel (Expedia) to luxury (LVMH, Kering). At Kering Group, she manages business performance and insights across multiple luxury brands, including Gucci, Saint Laurent, and Balenciaga. Her unique role involves balancing data-driven optimization with the creative constraints of luxury brand management, making her a sought-after speaker on experimentation in highly regulated creative industries.

About 1,000 Experiments Club

The 1,000 Experiments Club is an AB Tasty-produced podcast hosted by John Hughes, Head of Marketing at AB Tasty. Join John as he sits down with the experts in the world of experimentation to uncover their insights on what it takes to build and run successful experimentation programs.

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Article

7min read

Winning Big During the E-Commerce Holiday Season: Strategies and Insights

The holiday season is more than just a date on the calendar. For e-commerce teams, it’s the biggest moment of the year—a time of high stakes, fierce competition, and incredible opportunity. Black Friday and Cyber Monday can feel like a mad dash to the finish line, but the teams that win big don’t just show up; they prepare.

The numbers tell the story. In 2024, Black Friday online sales hit $10.8 billion, while Cyber Monday remained the biggest day for online shopping with a staggering $13.3 billion in sales according to Adobe. But here’s what those numbers don’t show: the months of preparation, testing, and collaboration that made those wins possible.

This isn’t about finding a single “hack” for holiday success. It’s about building momentum through smart, steady, and collaborative effort. It’s about asking the right questions, testing bold ideas, and learning from every single click.So, let’s get ready together. Here are some proven strategies—many of which you can find in our “30 Tests for Black Friday” e-book—to help your team go further this season.

First things first: Build a foundation of trust

Before the first sale banner goes up, your site needs to be ready for the rush. A slow or buggy experience is the fastest way to lose a customer. The difference between a page that loads in one second and a page that loads in five seconds can be a 17% drop in conversion rate.

Start by pressure-testing your site. Simulate high-traffic moments to find and fix potential bottlenecks before they become holiday headaches. Compress your images, streamline your code, and make sure your servers can handle the peak. A smooth, reliable experience is non-negotiable—it’s the foundation of trust.

Create urgency that doesn’t just shout, it connects

The holidays run on urgency, but “BUY NOW!” only gets you so far. The real goal is to create a sense of shared excitement and opportunity. This is where testing your messaging becomes essential.

Try moving beyond generic phrases. Experiment with different calls-to-action (CTAs), placements, and designs to see what truly motivates your audience.

  • Promotional Banners: Don’t assume every visitor lands on your homepage. MeUndies added a bold promo-code banner to their product detail pages (PDPs) to catch visitors arriving from ads. This small change led to a 9.8% increase in transactions and an uplift of over $400,000 in revenue.
  • Countdown Timers: The team at Moulinex wanted to drive traffic to a limited-time shopping event. They tested a simple banner with a countdown timer against one without. The result? The countdown banner drove 74% more clicks on the CTA. It’s a simple way to show that time to grab a great deal is running out.

Make every experience feel personal

Holiday shoppers aren’t a monolith. They’re individuals with unique tastes and needs, and they expect to be treated that way. Personalization is how you show your customers that you see them. Use browsing behavior and purchase history to tailor offers that feel less like a sales pitch and more like a helpful suggestion.

For example, if a customer has been eyeing your winter coats, feature them prominently. Dynamic content that adapts to user behavior makes every visit feel relevant and keeps people engaged.The team at Pan Pacific Hotels Group took this to heart. They created two audience segments—families and couples—and tailored the entire website experience with custom banners and offers. The result was a 35% uplift in bookings from these visitors. That’s the power of making it personal.

Non-negotiable: optimize for mobile experiences

More than half of all e-commerce sales happen on a phone. This isn’t a trend; it’s the standard. A clunky mobile experience isn’t just an annoyance—it’s a dealbreaker.

Your mobile site needs to be fast, responsive, and incredibly easy to navigate. Think simplified checkouts and thumb-friendly buttons. Test every step of the mobile journey, from landing page to confirmation.

A great idea is to add a fixed search bar for mobile visitors. When the Calvin Klein team tested this, they saw a 267% increase in search bar clicks. It’s a small change that removes friction and helps people find what they’re looking for, faster.

Build confidence with social proof

In a sea of holiday deals, trust is your most valuable currency. Social proof—like customer reviews, ratings, and real-time activity—is a powerful way to build that trust. It shows hesitant shoppers that they’re in good company.

  • Showcase what’s popular: NYX Professional Makeup tested adding a message on their product pages that said, “75 beauties have purchased this product today!” This simple addition doubled their transaction rate.
  • Suggest scarcity: L’Occitane en Provence tested showing how many people were currently viewing a product. This touch of social proof increased their transaction rate by 5.8%.

When people see that others are buying and loving your products, it makes their decision to purchase that much easier.

A checkout that just works

Cart abandonment is the ghost of holidays past, present, and future. A complicated, clunky checkout process is often the culprit. Your mission is to make paying as simple and seamless as possible.

Minimize the steps, offer multiple payment options (like PayPal or Apple Pay), and be upfront about shipping costs. Every bit of friction you remove is a potential sale saved.

The team at Galeries Lafayette noticed that two-factor authentication was adding an extra step to checkout. They tested a version that prioritized payment methods without it. The change was a huge win, boosting their conversion rate by 38%. It proves that even small steps toward simplicity can lead to big progress.

Keep the conversation going

The holiday season is an amazing time for acquiring new customers, but the real win is turning them into loyal fans who stick around. The journey doesn’t end when the package arrives.

Think about what comes next.

  • A simple, personalized thank-you email.
  • An exclusive offer for their next purchase.
  • An invitation to join your loyalty program.

Building these post-holiday touchpoints is how you turn a seasonal rush into sustainable growth. It’s about building a relationship, not just completing a transaction.

Your holiday prep list: Prepare, test, iterate

Winning the holiday season is a marathon, not a sprint. It’s the result of the work you put in beforehand—the preparation, the testing, and the courage to try something new.

By focusing on a solid foundation, personalizing the experience, and removing friction at every turn, you’re not just optimizing a website; you’re building a better journey for your customers.

Stay agile, keep learning, and trust in the process. With your team behind you and a willingness to iterate, you can do more than just survive the holiday rush—you can thrive in it.

Set yourself up for a successful holiday season with our e-book “30 Tests for Black Friday.